Xie Xishu followed Qi Wu back to his home.
His once familiar home had long since changed beyond recognition. It looked like a severe explosion had taken place, though it was hard to tell if this was due to a government “cleansing” or an accidental electrical accident caused by people who had mutated into monsters. The lower parts of the building had shattered glass everywhere, with debris piled on the ground, and soot-blackened walls. In the garden area of the complex, corpses dangled from tree branches and streetlights, swaying in the breeze. Some of them were still rotting, crows with blood-red eyes perched on the decaying bodies, cawing as they pecked hungrily. Other bodies had clearly been abandoned long ago, their flesh devoured by monsters or other animals, leaving only skeletons marked with splotches of dried blood.
The elevator was long out of order, so Qi Wu ended up carrying Xie Xishu up the stairs through the emergency exit.
The hallway was very dark; occasionally, Xie Xishu heard rustling sounds from things moving in the shadows, along with greedy, hidden gazes from the darkness. Some parts of Qi Wu’s body split open as they went.
Some things slipped off of him, twitching their wet, slender bodies as they wriggled into the cracks of the building.
There were also soft but strong appendages wrapping around Xie Xishu’s waist, leaving damp marks with a strong scent that belonged to a higher-ranked individual—a scent that would better deter monsters eying its precious prey.
The climb up was long.
But all things considered, it was relatively smooth. Only a few times did Qi Wu stop in a darkened area, raising his hand to cover Xie Xishu’s eyes.
Xie Xishu didn’t ask questions.
Qi Wu wouldn’t have told him anyway what lay in those shadowy spaces he couldn’t see.
When they finally reached the apartment, Xie Xishu’s back was damp with a fine layer of sweat. He had to admit that the closer he got to his own floor, the more nervous he became. But when he finally stood before the door, he was pleased to see that his apartment wasn’t as badly damaged as he had feared.
There were visible dents on the door, but nothing serious—no sign that anything had tried to break in. Compared to other apartments he’d glimpsed along the way, his was remarkably intact.
Xie Xishu fumbled around and found the spare key hidden in the corner of the fire hose box, then opened the door.
Creak—
The latch made a piercing scraping sound.
Then, the door opened.
Xie Xishu stepped inside.
Unlike the ruined world outside, the interior looked exactly the way it had when Xie Xishu had last left it.
Standing in his living room, he held his breath without realizing it, slowly looking around, feeling like it had been a lifetime.
“So much dust…”
He touched the coffee table, muttering softly, and then his legs gave out as he sank onto the sofa.
All his strength suddenly felt like it was slipping away, pouring out of him like sand.
“I’m home,” he murmured, lifting his head to look at Qi Wu.
A few seconds later, he repeated, “I’m home.”
“Mm.” Qi Wu stepped forward, hesitated for a moment, then awkwardly placed his hand on Xie Xishu’s hair, gently patting it.
He could feel how much Xie Xishu had relaxed since coming home. In the midst of his sorrow and nostalgia, there was a hint of quiet joy.
However, in a way Xie Xishu couldn’t see, Qi Wu’s brow furrowed slightly.
The air inside the apartment was heavily stale, which was to be expected. But Qi Wu was certain that, upon entering, he had caught a faintly troubling smell… No, it wasn’t rotting food (though Xie Xishu’s kitchen, like every kitchen in City A, had become a putrid swamp due to the power outage). This was an odor that triggered an instinctive reaction in Qi Wu’s monster senses.
In mutated City A, finding a dead body in one’s home wasn’t shocking.
What puzzled Qi Wu was that, for the smell of death, it was oddly faint.
So faint, in fact, that even a creature with a heightened sense of smell, like him, would need to concentrate to detect the faint trace of the odor.
Even to him, the scent seemed so elusive it was almost a hallucination.
“What is it?”
Though Qi Wu’s mind had wandered for just a moment, Xie Xishu had already noticed something off about him.
Qi Wu shook his head, his expression calm as ever.
“Nothing,” he replied, then added, “…It’s just nice to be home with you.”
Xie Xishu forced a smile, the corners of his mouth twitching slightly.
“True. If it weren’t for the zombie apocalypse, I’d never have believed I’d skip out on studying for the college entrance exams to bring a boyfriend home.”
Cough, cough, cough—
Though Xie Xishu had only intended the joke to lighten the mood, he succeeded in making his monstrous boyfriend choke and blush bright red.
Taking advantage of the remaining daylight, Xie Xishu and Qi Wu didn’t linger. They took a short moment to collect their thoughts, then went straight to his mother’s locked study.
Xie Xishu’s heart beat faster as he opened the door.
But when he finally stepped into the room, which now felt somewhat unfamiliar, his heart unexpectedly calmed. It was as if the nightmare had never happened. In the slightly stale air, he could still faintly catch his mother’s perfume.
Two large, sturdy metal filing cabinets stood on either side of the modest study, with every drawer securely locked. Between them was a wide, solid wood desk, its surface somewhat cluttered. Xie Xishu no longer remembered his mother’s expression the last time she left the study, but judging by the mess on the desk, she must have left in quite a hurry. Documents, papers, scattered files, and an uncapped fountain pen lay chaotically across the tabletop.
Xie Xishu first examined the documents, but as he skimmed them, his initial grave expression turned to confusion.
The desk was covered in all sorts of data and documents; some looked like formal research papers, while others seemed straight out of a sensationalist tabloid.
“‘In the Next Decade, Mammal Species Face a 25% Higher Risk of Extinction: The Prelude to Human Extinction?’”
He picked up a printed document and read the title aloud.
The other pages carried similar headlines.
“‘The Amazon Rainforest’s Destruction Accelerates—The Earth’s Lungs in Collapse… Amphibians on the Brink of Extinction, the Long-term Effects of Fatal Fungal Disease on Ecological Balance…’”
“‘Climate Change Triggers Insect Extinction, A Doomsday Warning for Global Ecosystems?’”
…
Xie Xishu went through the documents one by one, reading each page filled with what looked like serious issues but had long been routine environmental problems people had come to accept.
It was because the listed problems were so ordinary, so routine.
At first, Xie Xishu thought his mother was trying to create a diversion with these seemingly chaotic documents, like in a movie.
But once Qi Wu easily broke the lock on the metal file cabinets, letting Xie Xishu inspect drawer by drawer, he was left puzzled but relieved, realizing that all his prior fears had been unfounded.
His mother hadn’t been researching any horrific biohazardous agents or conducting inhumane experiments.
From the amassed documents and data, it was clear that his mother was just an ordinary conservation biology expert, researching species extinction and biodiversity preservation, occasionally evaluating ecological environments. It seemed that, due to the nature of her work, she was also a very strict and radical environmentalist.
Even as night fell and the fading light from outside made it impossible for Xie Xishu to read anything more, he found nothing suspicious related to himself.
If there was anything remotely relevant, it was only a draft his father had left from one of his research papers.
The draft content faintly echoed the “magma” from Xie Xishu’s dream.
His father had vaguely outlined his hypotheses on the potential effects of a unique substance in this draft. Among his speculations, he briefly noted the possibility of core magma radiation causing biological evolution, though he himself seemed to find the idea absurd.
It was clear that he had once shown this draft to his wife. At the end of the draft, Xie Xishu saw his mother’s familiar handwriting.
“Rubbish.”
She had left her blunt assessment.
“Intellectual garbage.”
“But it shows some promise in wild imagination.”
“I didn’t know you had a knack for writing sci-fi.”
…
His father’s response to this critique was a crude little crying face doodled at the end.
Xie Xishu stared at the doodle for a long moment, unable to resist running his finger over the paper. He couldn’t picture his parents having such a “sweet” interaction when they were younger.
So what had that dream been about? Had he somehow confused it with some movie, and childhood memories, hazy as they were, mixed with fear and anxiety, piecing unrelated fragments together?
Even though he hadn’t found any helpful clues in his mother’s study, nor had he made any sense of his dream, Xie Xishu couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief.
Then, his body swayed slightly.
“Xiao Shu!”
Qi Wu reached out to steady him.
The whole time Xie Xishu had been sorting through the documents, the young man had been silent, his attention fixed solely on him.
“I-I’m fine,” Xie Xishu said softly, touching his forehead.
“No, you’re not.”
No matter how much Qi Wu liked him, it seemed he had no intention of blindly following orders at the moment.
At least now, he wouldn’t let Xie Xishu brush it off.
“You’re too tired.”
In the darkness, Qi Wu’s gaze stayed fixed on Xie Xishu, unwavering, as he firmly led him out of the study.
“You should rest.”
“But…”
“No buts.”
Qi Wu replied, firmly.
Then he pulled Xie Xishu straight into the bedroom.
Being an ordinary human, Xie Xishu couldn’t see anything in the dark, but Qi Wu, as a monster, could clearly see his face, pale as a ghost, with dark circles under his eyes.
With almost no effort, Qi Wu pressed Xie Xishu’s weak and exhausted body down onto the soft bed.
“Qi Wu, wait, I still want to keep looking. There are candles here, I know where to find them…”
Xie Xishu instinctively tried to struggle.
But Qi Wu quickly restrained his hands and feet with several tendrils that had sprung from his body.
“There’s nothing else to see! You’ve been running around all day, and you keep getting dizzy—you’re too weak! It’s safe around here for now; what you need most is to get some proper sleep…”
Qi Wu’s face was serious, rigidly lecturing Xie Xishu. But as he spoke, his voice gradually softened.
Because he realized that their current position was a bit… unusual.
Qi Wu’s body completely loomed over Xie Xishu, with his nimble appendages encircling him. Xie Xishu’s body trembled slightly, perhaps running a low fever, making his skin warmer than usual and his scent richer.
They were so close now that if Qi Wu lowered his head just a little, he could give in to the intense desire raging in his mind and press his mouth against Xie Xishu’s neck, cheek, and lips.
But Xie Xishu was utterly exhausted; otherwise, Qi Wu wouldn’t have had to force him to lie down so firmly.
In the darkness, Qi Wu unconsciously brushed his fingers over Xie Xishu’s sweat-slick skin, wanting to bury himself against him. Yet he forced himself to hold back, despite how painful it felt, which made his movements noticeably stiff.
“Qi Wu.”
Then, he heard Xie Xishu murmur his name.
“…I just wanted to be sure.” Xie Xishu said, without any context, but Qi Wu immediately understood.
Xie Xishu wanted to know if he was human or not.
He wanted to return to humanity.
Return to a familiar, orderly world.
A pang of bitterness welled up in Qi Wu’s chest.
“Get some sleep.”
He said.
Xie Xishu thought that after today’s discoveries, he would be so bewildered that he wouldn’t be able to sleep.
But wrapped in Qi Wu’s familiar presence, he fell asleep quickly.
Qi Wu waited in the darkness for a long time, listening carefully to the increasingly steady sound of Xie Xishu’s breathing and heartbeat.
Once he was sure Xie Xishu was in a deep sleep, he slowly got up and slipped out of the room.
Then, he turned, focusing his gaze on the door across the hallway—the door to Xie Xishu’s parents’ bedroom. The scent that had bothered him from the start seemed to be coming from there.
Qi Wu opened the door, expressionless.
The bedroom curtains were drawn, making the room dim, empty, and otherwise unremarkable.
It was an ordinary master bedroom.
In fact, due to the lack of recent occupancy, the room looked even more minimal and tidy than most, with a neatly arranged dressing table, a perfectly made bed, and a closed wardrobe… everything was in plain sight.
Qi Wu even checked the wardrobe.
There were only a few items inside, each wrapped in a dust cover, hanging in a way that made the wardrobe feel empty.
He didn’t find anything that could be the source of the faint scent of decay.
Had he been mistaken?
He stood still, thinking for a moment.
It was possible that the smell had drifted in from outside; after all, bodies—both human and monster—were hardly lacking in this building.
At the same time, a message came through from the tendrils Qi Wu had left with Xie Xishu.
Sensing Qi Wu’s absence, Xie Xishu’s heartbeat had quickened, and he was no longer sleeping as deeply. Qi Wu tensed, prepared to leave immediately…
But at that moment, his eyes drifted to the dressing table.
There were only a few bottles of perfume on it now. One of them had a silver, wave-patterned mirrored surface, and a faint sliver of light had slipped through the gap in the curtains, illuminating the perfume bottle.
If a normal person had been in the room, they would have seen nothing unusual, but Qi Wu was no ordinary person.
And so, he noticed something off in the reflection.
In the mirrored surface of the perfume bottle, there was a vague, dark red shadow on the bed.
Yet, to his naked eye, the bed was covered with an unremarkable set of plain sheets.
In an instant, Qi Wu’s senses went on high alert. He turned back to look at the bed, still seeing nothing… until a sudden thought struck him. Moving forward, he closed his eyes and placed a hand on the center of the bed.
He felt something damp and decayed beneath his fingers.
When he opened his eyes again, Qi Wu finally saw what he’d glimpsed in the perfume bottle’s reflection—the shadowy red stain. And he had located the source of the smell.
It was a corpse.
Lying on the bed were two highly decomposed bodies.
Their blackish-red remains had soaked through their clothing. In the darkness, soft, anemone-like creatures clung to their grayish skeletons. Most had fallen off from Qi Wu’s earlier disturbance, but a few remaining ones still had faint, strange spots that flickered slowly.
